The present invention relates to an electronic thermometer such as an electronic clinical thermometer, and in particular to an electronic thermometer which can measure the temperature of an object at an early time after the beginning of measuring.
Generally in an electronic thermometer, for instance in an electronic clinical thermometer, the sensing portion is placed under the armpit or under the tongue of a patient for temperature measurement, but it normally takes time before this sensing portion comes into a thermal equilibrium with the patient's body temperature. According to a conventional electronic thermometer, either (a) the temperature as it transits from a changing state to a stable state is continually displayed, or (b) after the lapse of a certain time period after the beginning of the measurement process a converged body temperature is predicted and is then displayed once and for all. However, simply displaying the changing value of the body temperature as in case (a) does not give a stable converged or final temperature value at an early time, while on the other hand just performing body temperature prediction once as in case (b) may give a seemingly definite body temperature at an early time but cannot provide a high quality body temperature measurement at this time point. Thus, the sooner a body temperature prediction is made the more the predicted temperature value contains error, and conversely the later a body temperature prediction is made the more the predicted temperature value approaches the actual body temperature value but the longer it takes to make the prediction, so the more the benefit of making the prediction at all becomes irrelevant. Furthermore, the user cannot readily know how much error a temperature value prediction actually contains.